My original plan was to do a lightning round of short answers this week. However, between the release of the Bloodsails Eye on Eberron article today and the fact that this question gets asked every few months, it seems like a good time to get my answer in an easily accessible place.

As always, this isn’t canon and I’d love to hear what you’ve done in YOUR Eberron. If you’ve got comments on the Bloodsails article, post those here too! If you’ve got other questions or topics for future posts, ask in this thread.

So, the subject of the day: when I was working with Bill Slaviscek, James Wyatt, and Chris Perkins on the original Eberron Campaign Setting book, we agreed that there would be certain topics that would never have a concrete answer. No sourcebook would ever say exactly what caused the Mourning or bring back the Mark of Death. These things are hooks specifically left in the hands of the DMs – so you get to decide what the answer is and what impact it will have on your game. However, people are often curious to get my opinion. So let’s talk about the Mark of Death.

But first, a little history…

Let’s take a quick step back in the past to look at the history of Aerenal and the elves. The elves who founded Aerenal were refugees from many backgrounds and cultures. One thing linked them together: the cataclysmic loss they had suffered as a race, and the determination to ensure that the greatest elves should be preserved from death. As the new nation took shape, three philosophic and religious movements took root. One group was determined to preserve the heroes of the past by becoming their avatars in the present. These were the first of the Tairnadal, and they soon split off from the others. The second group tapped the positive energy found on the island and the reverence of the elves, and used this power to sustain the wisest and most worthy members of society beyond the grave. This was the foundation of the Undying Court. The final faction shared territory with the followers of the Court, but favored a different approach. Despite the power of the Undying Court, it relies on the continued existence of living elves and outside sources of positive energy. This other faction preferred to draw on the energies of Mabar, creating undead who could sustain their own lives by consuming the blood or life-force of others. The necromancers who created these liches and vampires were the members of the line of Vol.

The members of the line of Vol held these beliefs for thousands of years before the Mark of Death manifested among them. They weren’t alone; the Bloodsail Principality is made up of the descendants of other elven lines that were allied with Vol. Over the course of generations, the Undying Court grew more powerful and influential. The priests of the Undying Court asserted that all Mabaran undead consume the life-force of Eberron to sustain themselves – that while a lich may not require blood to survive, its mere existence is a threat to living creatures. The allies of Vol called this a ridiculous political ploy—an excuse to threaten their undead elders.

This tension continued to grow. And then the Mark of Death appeared. This cemented the line of Vol’s position among the Mabaran faction. They continued to research ways to improve their techniques and to pursue true immortality for their people. This quest led them down questionable paths, notably an alliance with a faction of dragons from Argonnessen. These dragons were concerned that the dragonmarks had appeared on the lesser races, and wanted to see if a mark could be made to manifest on a dragon.

Most likely you know where this ends: the birth of the half-dragon Erandis Vol. Things you might not know…

Dragonmarks don’t manifest until adolescence. Thus Erandis wasn’t immediately seen as a threat. She wasn’t the first half dragon produced in this program; she was simply the only one to manifest the mark. And yes, this means that in my version of Eberron, Erandis is physically an adolescent (albeit an adolescent half-dragon).

Erandis’ dragonmark is not least, lesser, or greater. It’s not even a Siberys mark. It is something more amazing than all of them… the ultimate distillation of the mark. If she had time to learn to fully harness its powers, there’s no telling what she might have been able to accomplish with it. Essentially, she was a living eldritch machine. And this is what triggered the destruction of her line.

The Undying Court had put up with the existence of the Mabarans for thousands of years, and the existence of the Mark of Death for centuries. The appearance of a dragonmark on a child of Aerenal and Argonnessen changed that. “The Sibling Kings declared that the blood of Vol was to be completely destroyed, since even a drop could destroy all living things.”

So it came to pass. Forces from Argonnessen joined with the Undying Court and battle was joined. The line of Vol was completely eradicated, and its remaining allies either slain, exiled, or sworn to abandon their Mabaran practices. Yet unknown to the Undying Court, Erandis herself survived. Together, her father and mother transformed her into a lich. Even she doesn’t know where her phylactery is; she knows only that she returns in a new location every time she is destroyed. Of course, a dragonmark has no power when carried by the undead. So Erandis Vol is the ultimate scion of her house, the cause of its destruction, and yet unable to achieve her destiny.

(Some of you may say “What was that about her phylactery? I’ve never heard that before.” That’s right. This again is MY Eberron, and that’s not a detail from a canon source. I see it as unlikely that she could have evaded the Deathguard completely for all this time. However, without locating her phylactery, even the Deathguard can’t permanently destroy her. It also means that she cannot destroy herself, and I think she may have tried in the past. And, of course, it means that PCs could find the phylactery and even she wouldn’t know what it was…)

So, history lesson over: let’s get to the main points.

I have a player who wants to have the Mark of Death, and I’m thinking I’ll allow it. What sort of powers should it have?

The Mark of Death was a “true” dragonmark, as opposed to an aberrant dragonmark. There are two things that distinguish these. First, they can be passed to offspring. Second, the true dragonmarks are almost universally constructive as opposed to destructive. There are a few marks with powers that can be used in an aggressive fashion, but the point is that the pure marks are things like making, healing, hospitality – productive, positive things. Meanwhile, aberrant marks are either destructive or in some way disturbing (for examble, Brom’s regeneration in The Son of Khyber, which is a form of healing but essentially reincarnates instead of healing, which can have unpleasant results).
My point is that the Mark of Death should be about interacting with death and the undead, but I wouldn’t make it about KILLING, because that’s an aberrant path. Things like speaking with the dead; animating the dead; controlling or even laying undead to rest; these all fit. It could be that a dragonshard focus item could be created that would harness that power in a destructive fashion – but that’s not the innate power of the mark.
Again, with Erandis Vol: bear in mind that she doesn’t just have the Dragonmark of Death, she has the ultimate expression of that mark, something beyond even a Siberys mark. If she returns to life, Erandis may be able to do things with her mark that no one else could do – raise an army of undead with a wave of her hand – but that’s because she is in essence a living Eldritch Machine.

What About Skeletal Guardian as the power of the Siberys mark?

Sounds fine to me. It’s about animating the dead, which is more in line with my views than an offensive power.

Beyond this, bear in mind that any dragonmark grants powers beyond the raw spell-like abilities… provided you know how to use them. Per standard rules, a dragonmark allows you to make use of dragonmark focus items. So you’ve got the Mark of Making? It’s nice that you can repair a construct, but it’s far more important that you can use a creation forge. The Mark of Storms makes you eligible to be an airship pilot. And so on. So the question is what tools the line of Vol created to harness and channel the power of the Mark of Death.

Likewise, in 4E, dragonmarks allow you to perform certain rituals. In my house rules, I say that you don’t need a ritual book to perform these rituals… but you have to be trained in their use (generally at the same market cost as buying it). There’s only one person out there who could train you in use of the mark, and that’s Erandis. Can you come to some sort of agreement?

I realize some of you may have been hoping for a concrete “the Least Dragonmark of Death lets you use deathwatch once per day,” but the fact of the matter is that I’ve never used it in one of my campaigns. In 4E, I will say that in addition to providing access to focus items and any logical rituals, I’d probably allow someone with the mark to perceive ghosts and to use speak with dead as a skill challenge as opposed to a ritual. I’d likely put a limit on length of death, but I’d personally have the Mark of Death involve interaction with the dead… not to be confused with the Mark of Healing, which prevents people from dying.

So a player character takes the Heir of Siberys Prestige Class and manifests the Mark of Death. Is it possible to re-establish House Vol? Would other Dragonmarked Houses approve its existence or see it as a threat?

You can’t reestablish House Vol, because House Vol never existed. The line of Vol was a noble family as opposed to a mercantile guild, and it was wiped out before the Twelve came into existence. So could you reform the line of Vol? Sure, if you had at least one living elf from the bloodline. The reaction of the dragonmarked houses would be based on whether you were cutting into their businesses in some way. Even if you came up with a mercantile niche using the mark that clashed with one of the houses (Jorasco?), unless you had a LOT of people with the mark and set up a serious commercial endeavor, it’s unlikely the houses will really care. Unlike…

Would the Aereni seek to slay this new heir even if the heir had no interest in vengeance against Aerenal? How would the dragons react to the resurrection of the Lost Mark?

Let me give you that quote again: “The Sibling Kings declared that the blood of Vol was to be completely destroyed, since even a drop could destroy all living things.” Short form: They won’t take it well. The same goes for the dragons. To be clear, this isn’t about YOU. Again, the Mark of Death was around for 600 years before the eradication, and that includes Siberys marks. The reason it needs to be wiped out is because as long as it exists, it is possible that you could produce a new abomination like Erandis. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a nice person or an evil one. It’s a question of eradicating your bloodline.

Now, obviously the game’s no fun if dragons kill you right away. So if I was going to use a returned Mark of Death in my game, I’d do it in one of the following ways:

Lay low. Can you keep your mark hidden? If you have to use it, can you trust the people who see it?

Help from above. Perhaps there’s a dragon in the Chamber who’s actively debating with the others and promoting an interpretation of the Prophecy that shows that your Mark is vital to the future. Perhaps Erandis or a Lord of Dust is working to hide you from your potential powerful enemies… though this might not be a good thing.

Of course if your goal is to go public and announce “I HAVE THE MARK OF DEATH” in fiery letters? In MY Eberron that’s just not going to end well for you. But hey, if you want to play things differently, do that.

How would the Valenar feel about a reborn Mark of Death?

The Tairnadal (the culture of the Valenar) never gave a damn about the line of Vol or the Mark of Death. How they would react to you would vary based on the individual and their ancestor.

How would Lady Vol react? Would she try to influence a person who manifested the Mark of Death?

Oh, definitely. But here, you need to decide what Erandis’s end goal is. Let me throw out a few possibilities.

The Happy Ending. Erandis is just sad her family got wiped out. She wants her family back, and figures that this will require the destruction of the Undying Court and Argonnessen. This is good news for you, because it means she wants you alive. The next question is how you feel about this. If you’re all for it, great! You can team up, she can help hide your mark, and you can be sent on missions to rally all her scattered allies from the good old days. If you don’t particularly like this idea, the bad news is that the best approach is to chain you in the basement and use you in a breeding program. I don’t see a lot of reason for subtlety here, although it may take her a while to find out that you HAVE the mark; one of her minions has to find out about it, pass the info along, and then she has to find you.

Queen of Death. Erandis believes that her destiny is to BECOME death… to replace the Keeper and claim dominion over Dolurrh and all mortal souls. The good news is that this doesn’t necessarily require her to, say “destroy all living things.” The bad news is that your reestablishing the line of Vol doesn’t help HER achieve her destiny. More likely, she’s going to try to come up with some way to use your blood, heart, or other random organs to return to life so she can unlock her Mark and use her destiny. How she’ll manipulate you is tied to what she needs to do to achieve this. Essentially, you’re part of a recipe. “Take one living heir with the Mark of Death, add paragon tier, add the gaze of Belashyrra, add a trip to Mabar, and sacrfice.” So it’s really up to the DM to decide what she needs you to do before you’re a suitable sacrifice… and how subtle she’ll have to be to accomplish these things. With that said… Again, Erandis accomplishing her goal isn’t necessarily bad; you won’t know until she does it and you find out if she makes a good Queen of the Dead. So one possibility is that you find a way to help return her to life that DOESN’T involve sacrificing you. Heck, if she goes ahead and ascends, it may be that the dragons will come to the conclusion that they were off-base in their reading of the Prophecy and leave you alone afterwards.

The Unhappy Ending. Remember that “even a drop could destroy all living things” line? Unfortunately, Erandis thinks THAT’S her destiny. So this is the same as the above, but the outcome is bad for everyone; there’s no helping her do it.

So the short form is that I can’t answer this. It’s up to your DM to decide what Vol is trying to do, if there’s any room for compromise, and if her best course of action is heavy-handed or subtle. With that said, if I did it, I’d definitely go the Queen of Death route and have a big list of conditions that need to be met before you’re ready for the sacrifice. It’s basically the same as having a shaper dragon interested in you as described in The Chamber article that went up last month.

Feel free to ask additional questions about Erandis or the Mark of Death, or to share your own experiences!

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14 Responses to “Dragonmark 4/18: The Mark of Death”

Never used Erandis in my home campaigns. But I love the character. If I used her, I would with the biggest amount of shades of gray possible. Their means to the end would be very evil, but her objective is a nice one. Like “I just want my family back”. The key point would be that her end would depend entirely on the players actions in understanding her and averting the Lords of the Dust and Argonessen manipulating her. She could become a new goddess, or just be reborn with a mark of death(and create a dragonmarked house), she could die, or became a rajah-like entity that would scourge Eberron.

Personally, I like her as someone who has, quite reasonably, been driven mad by what she’s been through. She was born to fulfill her family’s destiny (something she never asked for). Her birth caused her family to be obliterated. She has spent the last two thousand years with the key to her destiny on her back yet utterly powerless. And she can’t even die. So yes, I will have her use anyone, kill anyone, do anything that might get her closer to her goal because again, after two thousand years nothing else really matters. Should she achieve her destiny, she might actually come back around and be a decent death-goddess. But do you believe that?

The second interesting aspect is this. If Erandis can become what amounts to a goddess of death, could a Jorasco halfling/dragon hybrid produce a goddess of life? Could a Cannith human/dragon pairing create a new Onatar? The drawback to this premise is that the elves spent a few centuries producing Erandis, so it’s not an easy thing to have happen with your PCs… UNLESS you were to decide that half-dragons take the form of their birth-race until a certain age, and that your players are only just about to discover that they are the product of a secret Argonnessen breeding program designed to produce gods! In which case you have to ask how aberrant marks fit in this picture…

Or, the Dragons might not even know that it’s a breeding program, per se. “Random” pairings, rationalized as “nothing to worry about, it took centuries of breeding for Erandis to happen” resulting in the sudden appearance of a dozen half dragon demi gods.

Or some group (LoD?) could have used trickery to get dragons to mate with Heirs without the dragon knowing the other person was Dragonmarked.

Keith – definitely, one of the most fascinating parts of Eberron to me was all the various things going on with various forms of not-quite-life. You mention 3 above (undead, undying, and avatar-recreation), to which I’d call out a 4th: warforged.

I ran a campaign a while ago that very much centered on it. The initial trigger was two of my players – one was a warforged, another was a gnome Karnathi cleric of Vol. To make a long story short the campaign very much centered around ‘what’s going on with all of these souls’. The net result in my campaign was that the characters realized that all of this soul-manipulation was eroding the barriers between the planes and had to decide what to do about this.

I wouldn’t say I had a perfect solution to it, but as a GM I definitely appreciated having a ‘mystery space’ at the center of Eberron where I could play around!

Hyperlexic – funny you should mention warforged and souls, as I just added some of my thoughts on that to the earlier “Faith, Religion, and Souls” post from last week! And I’m glad to hear that you appreciate the mystery space, as it’s something that has certainly been a debate among the designers.

I had a character take the Mark of Death in my Eberron game; the player was new to Eberron and latched onto the 4e player’s guide short description of the Blood of Vol as being pretty cool for her half-vampire eladrin Avenger, so I was pretty gleeful at the prospect since I’d already had some plots in motion when she heard about the Mark of Death being a thing and asked if she could have it.

Mechanically speaking, my version of the Mark gave the typical 4e “you can learn and cast rituals connected to death in some way”–Speak With Dead, Gentle Repose, etc. Its constant power, though, was the ability to lay souls to rest; basically, she could give painless release from life or undeath, sending the soul directly to whatever is beyond Dolurrh. The idea here was that in its natural expression, the Mark of Death was a funerary Mark; I thought about what sort of niche it might have filled had it lived long enough to become a House, and came up with the idea of undertakers and mediums. Combat-wise it wasn’t a very useful power, although it did come up a few times, most notably in freeing the collective souls of everything that died in the Mourning.

Erandis was the villain for most of Paragon tier; basically she’d engineered the birth of the aforementioned character as part of a contingency plan for one of her plots to achieve her destiny through merging Eberron with Thelanis and Dolurrh. The appearance of the Mark was an unexpected consequence; she’d just been preparing a suitable ritual ingredient in the PC’s blood, but had happened upon a confluence of ancestral blood that ended up being close enough to the line of Vol to allow for the reemergence of its Mark. She offered the PC a seat at the table, so to speak, but her utter lack of real faith in the ideas of the religion she manipulates was sufficiently distressing to the PC that she resolved to oppose her; Erandis wanted to become the Queen of Death but didn’t seem to care at all about helping others transcend death and didn’t actually have a plan or goal for making the world better once she did so, which the PC rejected.

Interestingly, later in the campaign Erandis actually *did* become the new Goddess of Death, and turned out to be pretty not so bad at it; having basically no further ambitions to fulfill, she basically settled down to do her job (which turned out to be pretty demanding since she’d gotten it by causing a magical cataclysm )

On an only semi-related topic, one thing I’d love to hear more about is the Qabalrin; information on them seems pretty sparse, and just their existence raises interesting questions. But other than hints about them having been part of the precursors to the Blood of Vol’s philosophies, details seem pretty sparse. I’d love to get more info about that particular culture and the extent to which its fingerprints are still visible in modern Eberron.

I see the mark as being the bridge between living and dead, so funerary customs and mediums seems a logical approach. As for the Qabalrin, the primary resource on them is issue #122 of Dungeon – the Paizo print run, though I’d imagine its in PDF. Though frankly, their fingerprints don’t run that deep in the modern age. Given that Eberron drow aren’t much like their FR cousins, I’d call the Qabalrin the “darkest” elves – philosophically, at least. The line of Vol employed necromantic techniques pioneered by their Qabalrin ancestors, but we haven’t depicted a lot of cultural similarity; if there was, odds are good there’d have been a clash between Vol & the Court earlier.

I used Erandis in my game as the “final boss” of the Paragon Tier. The PCs had caught snippets of some plot since level 1 involving the Emerald Claw which culminated in a ritual Erandis was using to affect the sun somehow. The PCs were only half successful in that they disrupted the ritual, but had to turn back before completely stopping it and destroying her.

I had her come back in late Epic Tier was the risen Queen of Death, pretty much commanding an entire continent’s worth of Undead. The ritual involved her siphoning off some of the positive energy from the Sun and using it to restore her to semi-life, just enough to gain use of her mark. After millenia of researching it, she pretty much kicked off an undead apocalypse in the Ring of Storms by awakening the ancient Qabalrin undead and immediately asserting control over them (like with an always-on Command Undead spell). One of the effects of her mark was that any undead created from it would create spawn when it killed a living thing, even for undead that don’t normally do so. Qabalrin liches killed and their victims became Qabalrin liches, base zombies and skeletons made more zombies and skeletons. Eventually her massive wave of undead blanketed all of Xendrik, at which point the PCs caught wind of if.

They didn’t know it, but Erandis had one goal in mind: Gain control over the Undying Court (and then siphon it’s gestalt divine energy into herself). While normally deathless are an entirely different thing from undead, the sun ritual turned her into a font of both negative and positive energies, and her mark granted her control over all forms of not-living people. It’s the Mark of DEATH, afterall, not Undeath, and the Undying aren’t exactly living people. With the Undying Court bowing at her heel, she’d have the energy to be a true Goddess.

Unfortunately the PCs realized the kink in her plan: The undead all followed her command because of her Mark. And she could only use it because she was semi-”alive” now. So they just had to kill her.

(Running in 4e, I based her combat stats off a Demilich. The soulgem mechanic was used to represent her Mark of Death sucking up souls.)

When they killed her semi-living body, she eventually reformed near her phylactery (Which, by the way, was “the legacy of Vol”, meaning she possessed some poor random elf distantly related to Vol, killing them and transforming their body into hers). But when she reformed it was as her normal lich-self, and her Mark was once again dead and inactive. I can just imagine her hissy fit.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up, Keith! I haven’t used the Blood of Vol much in my games (other than using the Emerald Claw as mooks in Eyes of the Lich Queen), but after reading this article I’m really excited about featuring the Mark of Death in my next story arc.

What made Mark of Death so special that only it could be passed to a half-dragon offspring? Or was it the degree of power Erandis manifested that made dragons freak out, and there existed other half-dragon bearers of other true marks?

I mean, even if after Erandis it was forbidden to mate with dragonmark heirs, some rogue dragons must have tried to replicate the experiment over the centuries.

The Mark of Death was passed normally, but only at the normal level of power. The point is that Erandis’s mark is more powerful than even a Siberys dragonmark. It’s something that could theoretically be done with any other dragonmark. However, bear in mind two things:

* It wasn’t just “a dragon and an elf have a kid – did anything happen?” It was an orchestrated arcane breeding program involving the development and use of rituals encouraging the successful transfer of the mark and amplification of power, with the resources of a powerful political party (filled with dragonmarked heirs) and a flight of dragons.

* As a result of those experiments, the entire dragonmarked line and flight of dragons were systematically exterminated. Argonnessen has a police force – the Eyes of Chronepsis – looking for dragons doing just this sort of thing.

* The experiments took decades. It involved multiple generations of children, and remember that dragonmarks don’t manifest until adolescence – so you don’t even know if it’s working for at least a decade.

So COULD a rogue dragon do this? Certainly, and it would be an interesting story for a campaign. But they haven’t so far because it’s not a trivial task and because now the Eyes of Chronepsis are watching for it. Consider this: Dragonmarks are closely tied to the Prophecy. The Eyes of Chronepsis are reasonably skilled at reading the Prophecy. Do you want to take the chance that they’ll spy your intent in it? Again, one reason Vol’s experiment went on as long as it did was because it had never been done before; now the Conclave is watching.

In any case: Absolutely, it’s a great idea for a scenario. But there’s good reason it hasn’t been done since then.

I noticed this article just now; thanks for all replies and your own opinions on the matter .

I agree that mark of Death is not mark of Undeath; meaning mark of death could bring death to undead even. So bearer of the mark can be great animator of undead or one which destroys undead with wave of hand.

But surprise that Erandis mark is beyond even scope of Siberys mark; it makes my char a lower league than her by mile then . But it also explains why specifically elves and Argonesse teamed up and freaked about Erandis having dragonmark (I had wondered about half-dragon offspring case).

My players like to play what they like to play, but don’t mind giving me pretty free reign to work on their backgrounds to make what they have come up with fit the setting. Shortly after I read the Fading Dream I had a player join who wanted to play an Eladrin who, for Faerie Court cultural, character personality and player personality, was going to be difficult to integrate into the party. Here is what I did.

The character’s name is Erevan Volinnae. The Eladrin House Volinnae used to be a powerful noble house on Thelanis, primarily based in Shae Tiras Tolai. When that Spire was lost, the fortunes of the House fell.
Erevan’s branch of the house lives in Shae Loralyndar. A couple of years ago, shortly after Thelanis became coterminous and Shae Loralyndar made worldfall, Erevan was in the Twilight Demesne and met an elf named Lorien Vallenae. While ordinarily Erevan would not have condescended to spend much time wallowing the in mud with debased Eladrin, it came out in conversation that one of the few parts of their history that the Vallenae family remembered was their earliest Eladrin ancestors, and that Erevan and Lorien were in fact very distant cousins. As a result, they started to spend time together.

Through of series of events that is not important to this posting, the two became lost in the wilds of the Shadow Marches, where they encountered the following fragments of a prophecy:

…thrice lost and once found, before the seed can find the way it must first enter the mother and be swallowed by the dark, where lies madness…

… shall salvation be found in death, or death in salvation?

Shortly after that they found themselves in a modified version of Khyber’s Harvest.

You probably know where I am going with this. Lorien has not been received any uncommon or reare items but has received a bonus feat called “frenzy” which bears a striking resemblance to dragonborn frenzy. I am planning of granting one of those per level, leaving the more obviously draconic feats for last.

Nothing like that has happened to Erevan so far, but I am planning to put them through a modified version of Eyes of the Lich Queen. All the players are new to Eberron so none of them have a clue where this campaign is headed.

I’m planning to create a Mark of Death with powers that are not merely limited to dealing with Mabarian undead, but also with undying, the previous application of the Mark being more a choice informed by the House of Vol’s previous inclinations than one intrinsic to the nature of the Mark.

It is clear that both the Aerenal and the Dragons consider some combination of the merging of the bloodlines and the emergence of the Mark of Death, and in particular Erandis’ form of the Mark, to be of vital importance. Having read Keith’s comments about the nature of Erandis’ Mark I am starting to think that the Resurrection of Erandis Vol is the first step on the road to Armageddon. The nature of the ending of Eberron, and what comes after, will be very much dependant on the choices made by the Living Erandis and how she chooses to use her Mark. As a result, influencing the future will very much be a battle for the heart and soul of Erandis Vol.

Not that I will ever likely run the endgame, but as a DM it gives me an idea of the ultimate goals of the most powerful and informed players in the game. In the short term it will also influence what I choose to make as Erandis’ motives, and the nature of the interaction that will inevitably occur between her and the player characters.